For Nietzsche, Christianity began with Paul. The rabbi Paul, whose Jewishness is stressed by Nietzsche (25)(23), wanted only power for himself (22). To gain power, he invented a false philosophy so as to bring people under his control. This was identical to the earlier methods and motives of the Jewish priests when they fabricated the Bible (26)(29). Paul’s rewriting of history to suit his own ends was a typically Jewish trick (24). In short, Paul was not only a Jew, he was “the Jew, the eternal Jew par excellence . . .” (58).

Paul then used his new doctrine to mobilize the losers, the failures, the people at the bottom, to bring down the Roman Empire. His motivation was resentment and hatred “against everything noble, joyous and high spirited on earth . . .” (43). Since Nietzsche uses the word “us” in that context, “against us,” it is clear (as if evidence were needed) that Nietzsche considered himself among the spiritually favored few—indeed, elitist contempt for common people is a recurring theme of the book. In other words, Paul and the Christians set out to destroy the Roman empire just because it represented real life. If Nietzsche considered the Christian destruction of Rome as revenge for the crucifixion of Christ, that is not stated in this particular book.

In elaborating on these ideas, Nietzsche has comments referring to the Christians as vampires, parasites, and bloodsuckers (49) (58). It needs to be stressed that this included Jews and applied to Jews (except for the few independent spirits acceptable to Nietzsche). He makes this clear when he states that, although the original God of one chosen people became the God of the whole world, the democratic God, the cosmopolitan God, yet nevertheless “ . . . he remains a Jew, he remains a god in a corner, a god of all the dark nooks and crevices, of all the noisesome quarters of the world!” (17).

Unlike some today, Nietzsche understood that there was such a thing as the “Judaeo-Christian moral system” (24). That there is one God, a God of moral laws and rules that we must submit to and obey; that happiness in life comes not from exaltation of the self but from obedience to God; that God is a moral God who rewards good and punishes evil—often in this life but certainly in the next—Nietzsche understood that, in the European context of his day, this came from Christianity and initially from Judaism.

Nietzsche declared war on these concepts and sought to destroy them. Although his ideas are more acceptable now, they will fail in the end—and his own personal campaign ended in his destruction. As Jesus said, “. . . whosoever shall exalt himself shall be abased; and he that shall humble himself shall be exalted.” None of his contemporaries exalted themselves more highly than Nietzsche, the overman, the spiritual elitist who despised common people, the first man to speak the truth in many centuries—and none were more horribly abased (as the sordid descriptions of an insane Nietzsche amply illustrate). Howling, raging, weeping, singing, smashing windows, writing nonsense, making barking noises, groaning, raving and making wild gestures, dancing naked, uttering long incoherent monologues, roaring, begging for help, childlike and docile, silent with vacant eyes, moaning, and unable to control his bodily functions—such was the fate of this pitiful loser who thought of himself as an “overman,” a superior being.

I hope no one will imagine I am gloating. I am stating the facts, and would have been much happier if Nietzsche could have repented of his sinful ideas, come to a real understanding of life, and found the happiness that always eluded him—but, Nietzsche did not want to do that. He fought against God, and he lost. I can agree with Stefan Steinberg’s comment that “In a certain respect Nietzsche’s tragic end is itself a metaphor . . .”—though Steinberg did not mean this in a Christian context, and explained his metaphor in a secular way.[i]

Attempting to dispel criticisms of his remark, Harris first gives on the internet the relevant passage from The End of Faith. Then he concedes that he did not express himself as well as he might have-”Granted, I made the job of misinterpreting me easier than it might have been”-and goes on to claim that saying he wants to kill people for their ideas “remains a frank distortion of my views.” He explains:

When one asks why it would be ethical to drop a bomb on Osama bin Laden or Ayman Al Zawahiri, the answer cannot be, “because they have killed so many people in the past.” These men haven’t, to my knowledge, killed anyone personally. However, they are likely to get a lot of innocent people killed because of what they and their followers believe about jihad, martyrdom, the ascendancy of Islam, etc.

At this point we can breathe a sigh of relief-if he only wants to kill some terrorists then it’s alright-and Harris (who wears a white hat) can go back to his hobby of demonizing theists (who wear black hats). A closer examination of his explanation reveals, however, a couple of difficulties.

For one thing, millions of people share Osama bin Laden’s ideas. Should they be killed? If Sam Harris says “Yes,” then he wants to slaughter millions of people not because they have done anything wrong, but because they might do something wrong someday. That was Lenin the atheist’s reasoning in a nutshell. It’s easy for people who deny the immortal soul to advocate-and do-such things. If, on the other hand, Harris says millions of people should not be killed for their ideas, but should only be killed if they put their ideas into practice, or if they enable and cause others to put those ideas into practice, then he has shifted ground considerably, and did express himself poorly.

A second problem with this is that in his aforementioned book The End of Faith, Harris has repeatedly identified not only Islamic extremists, but also Christians who believe in the Bible, as threats to the survival of humanity. According to him, belief in the Bible is a threat to civilization and Christians, not just Osama bin Laden, could easily be included among those whose dangerous ideas require their elimination.

Many quotes could be given to show that Harris sees theism, including biblical Christianity, as a danger.

our religious differences-and hence our religious beliefs [emphasis in original]-antithetical to our survival [emphasis added]. We can no longer ignore the fact that billions of our neighbors believe in the metaphysics of martyrdom, or in the literal truth of the book of Revelation . . .Words like “God” and “Allah” must [emphasis added] go the way of “Apollo” and “Baal,” or they will unmake our world. “[iii]

. . . faith is still the mother of hatred . . . The only salient difference between Muslims and non-Muslims is that the latter have not proclaimed their faith in Allah, and in Mohammed as his prophet. [Harris is imprecise in his use of language here-he says "non-Muslims" when he means "non-Muslim theists like Christians and Jews," not "all non-Muslims"-but his meaning is clear from the preceding words and from the whole thrust of the chapter.][iv]

Words like “the fall of civilization,” “could ultimately destroy us,” “driving us toward the abyss,” “life-destroying gibberish” (this of both the Koran and the Bible)[v] tell us that Sam “The-sky-is-falling” Harris wants to save the human race from religion-and what might not be done if the fate of humanity is at stake? Wouldn’t it be justified to kill some people to save humanity-especially if they have no immortal souls and are nothing but matter?

Harris does not just want to save humanity-he wants to “create the world anew.” This requires “the building of strong communities”[vi] where everyone will think the way Sam Harris wants them to. Wouldn’t life be so much easier in a “unified” community where everyone marched to the beat of the same drum? That was Hitler’s and Lenin’s dream exactly. To achieve this secular paradise religion, especially Christianity and Islam, needs to go. It is urgent for the future well-being of humanity. Religious faith “must” disappear. “Religious tolerance . . . is one of the principle forces driving us toward the abyss.” Along with this clear call for intolerance, Harris advocates “uprooting” religion, which he falsely describes as “the most prolific source of violence in our history.”[vii] Somehow he blames the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the War of 1812, drug related ghetto violence and World Wars I & II on religion.

Sam Harris has a strong incentive to “uproot” the ideas that “must” disappear-the salvation of the human race. Do I need to point out that the word “uproot” has connotations of violence? Harris openly said people with dangerous ideas should be killed, and then, when questioned, said “Oh, I just meant a few terrorists.” He has identified theists, including Bible believing Christians, as people with dangerous ideas that menace the human race. That Christianity is dangerous is one of the main themes of his Letter to a Christian Nation. What is to prevent him, or those with his “values,” from believing that killing Christians, or any other believers, is necessary for the good of mankind?

“The world would be a much better place if we could just get rid of (a) the capitalists and kulaks; (b) the Jews; (c) people who believe in God. They are to blame for all our problems. They are enemies of humanity, and we are doing the world a favor by getting rid of them.”

Once an atheist accused me of “paranoia” on this point-but I am not the least bit paranoid about Sam Harris. I realize he may just be talking without knowing what he is saying-though I doubt it. I realize he will probably never get his hands on the levers of power. I only want to suggest that he may, like Hitler, be pointing at other people as the source of evil when he is a source of evil himself. Certainly the atheists Lenin, Stalin, and Mao make Osama bin Laden look like a Boy Scout. Hitler also gave plausible explanations to those who were concerned about his radical statements.

Perhaps, since the idea that bloodshed follows from secular ideas is one of the main ideas of this study, it might not be too much of a digression to look at another place where Sam Harris advocates a policy that could lead to the deaths of millions. Referring to the SARS scare that emerged out of China in 2003, Harris states that the consequences of China’s irrational and politically motivated policies did not lead to catastrophe-that time. He goes on to say that it is “not difficult to imagine” a situation where inability to properly handle such a health crisis would be too dangerous for the entire world. In that case, “There is little doubt we would ultimately quarantine, invade, or otherwise subjugate such a society.”[viii]

This is a remarkable statement. If a truly world-threatening epidemic were to emerge from China, the Sudan, Burma, Mexico, Rumania, or some other country whose health-standards were less than adequate, Harris thinks it might be necessary to “invade” or “subjugate” such a country. Oh, he allows for the possibility of a quarantine as well, but he can calmly and rationally advocate a policy-including subjugating China or, who knows, even Russia-that would cause unimaginable suffering and slaughter.

Sam Harris has a vision of an ideal world. In this world, there would be no irrational health policies and no security threats, because everyone would have basically the same ideas (his ideas naturally). In order to attain this vision, some people will have to go. Religious people have to go, and threats to the general well-being must be subjugated, by force and invasion and full scale war if necessary. Sam Harris is a good example of how the road to secular Utopias leads through swamps, bogs, and quagmires of human blood and bones-and in the end proves to be unattainable, so all of the suffering was in vain.

[ii] Sam Harris, “Response to Controversy,” http://www.samharris.org/site/full_text/response-to-controversy2/; accessed September 2008.

[iii] Harris, The End of Faith, pp. 13-14.

[iv] Ibid., p. 30.

[v] Ibid., pp. 26, 26, 15, 23.

[vi] Ibid., pp. 24, 21.

[vii] Ibid., pp. 14, 15, 27.

[viii] Ibid., p. 233

The present situation

Christianity is being attacked in America today as never before. On TV shows and in movies, in the news media, in academia, in best-selling books, etc., Christians are being increasingly portrayed as narrow-minded, intolerant, ignorant, hypocritical, and even evil. This goes beyond mere ridicule. The basic teachings of Christianity are being condemned to an extent previously unimagined in this country.

It is being increasingly said that Christianity has had a negative impact on America’s history and culture-not just because of abuses, but because of fundamental characteristics of the religion. It was the Christians, it is argued, who enslaved the blacks, exterminated the Indians, oppressed women, burdened people with guilt and denied them sexual freedom, and forced the gays to stay in the closet.

Christianity has even been blamed for pollution and the destruction of the environment. God’s commandment in Genesis to “subdue” the earth and “have dominion” over the creatures is said to be a license for ecological plundering and pillaging. Never mind that the destruction of the environment only emerged as a serious problem in the modern era, nearly two thousand years after Christ died and rose again. Never mind that those who make the most noise about the destruction of the environment continue to enjoy their wasteful and environmentally destructive modern lifestyles while they attack the Bible.

Part of this negative trend has been increasing attempts to link Christianity and the Bible to Adolf Hitler and the crimes of the Nazis. While it will seem incredible to some that the teachings of Christ and the Bible should be linked to Aryan supremacy, German militarism, the horrors of the death camps, and the extermination of six million Jews, such is sadly the case.

Christianity linked to Naziism

In the recent past, it was much more commonly assumed that Christianity had nothing to do with National Socialism. It was believed that Christianity was basically benevolent, while National Socialism was basically evil, that Hitler was as far removed from the Sermon on the Mount as it is humanly possible to get. The great majority of Americans would have assumed that the Jewish experience in America was the norm, the result of the Christian influence on American culture.

The cultural climate has changed in the last fifty years, however, and the growing power of secularism makes people less inclined to view Christianity so tolerantly. The well-known support of German Christians for Hitler; statements about God, Christianity, and the churches by Hitler and by leading Nazis, including strong opposition to atheism; Hitler’s Catholic upbringing and his Concordat with the Vatican; the fact that Hitler never officially withdrew from the Catholic Church; the official support for “positive Christianity” in the Nazi party platform; the supposed fact that Hitler came to power in an overwhelmingly Christian country; centuries of Christian anti-Semitism; verses in the New Testament that seem hostile to Jews; the massacres of the Canaanites in the Old Testament-all of these and even other arguments have been emphasized by those who see more and more evidence of connections between Hitler and Christianity.

Reputable scholars and historians have studied Hitler’s ideology more objectively. George Mosse’s The Crisis of German Ideology: Intellectual Origins of the Third Reich; Daniel Gasman’s The Scientific Origins of National Socialism; Peter Viereck’s Metapolitics: The Roots of the Nazi Mind; Richard Weikart’s From Darwin to Hitler: Evolutionary Ethics, Eugenics, and Racism in Germany; Michael Mack’s German Idealism and the Jew: The Inner Anti-Semitism of Philosophy and German Jewish Responses; Paul Lawrence Rose’s Revolutionary Antisemitism in Germany from Kant to Wagner-these all show from different perspectives and with different emphases how the 19th century’s secular philosophies opened the door to the emergence of horrors unprecedented in the history of the human race. John Conway’s The Nazi Persecution of the Churches 1933-1945 does not deal with the origins of National Socialism, but it demonstrates that Hitler viewed Christianity as a rival for the allegiance of the German people and sought to eliminate its influence as much as possible, his devious political rhetoric notwithstanding.

The work of these and other authors too numerous to name have had a significant impact, but unfortunately there remain those who seem to relish attacking Christianity. Oblivious to historical realities and misinformed or even hopelessly ignorant of biblical teachings, they continue to try to link Christianity to Hitler. They have had an impact as well, and we should not underestimate them. Too few Christians understand the extent to which what they perceive as a beneficent religion of grace, peace, and forgiveness is increasingly associated by many with the cruelties of the Third Reich.

A Holocaust video checked out from the local library asserts that centuries of Christian anti-Semitism made Jews Hitler’s natural target (completely omitting all of 19th-century secular and racial anti-Semitism). A popular biography of Hitler agrees with a Holocaust scholar that Hitler was just carrying out the policies of the Roman Catholic Church when he slaughtered the Jews. An in-depth academic analysis of the Holocaust published by a prestigious university press and acclaimed by scholars from top American universities refers to the false and “venomous” anti-Jewish teachings of the New Testament and asserts that by demonizing the Jews Christianity played a significant role in laying the foundations for the Holocaust.[i]

The debate over what Hitler believed and where he got his ideas has not merely continued over the years, it has intensified. This is true to such an extent that Richard Evans, editor of the prestigious Journal of Contemporary History has written, “The relationship of German National Socialism to religion in general, and Christianity in particular, has recently moved to the forefront of historical inquiry.”[ii] Partly this is due to a natural human desire for deeper spiritual understanding that the countless secular books about Hitler have not satisfied and will never satisfy. Partly it is due to the fact that linking Hitler to Christianity is an increasingly common tactic in the culture wars. If Naziism can be convincingly blamed on Christian influence, then obviously Christians are potentially dangerous fanatics who deserve to be marginalized or even excluded from the political process as much as possible. This reasoning explains why some believe they are protecting American liberty and democracy by working to eliminate Christian influence. There are those who sincerely believe that they are defending democracy by attacking and marginalizing Christianity.

…

As groundless as such arguments are, they are effective with people who know little about history and nothing about Christianity. In more than one internet debate, I have been referred to Walker’s website for proof that Christianity leads to hatred, cruelty, and fascism. Such accusations have gone for far too long without a direct response. As was the case in Germany, the Christians in America have been too passive and inert while the forces of darkness grow in strength and intensity. The spread of such ideas will affect us directly and has already begun to affect us. We are mistaken if we think that because God has blessed America with liberty in the past, we are therefore guaranteed of this blessing forever.

[ii] Richard Evans, “Naziism, Christianity and Political Religion: A Debate,” Journal of Contemporary History 42, no. 1 (2007), p. 5

Many Christians are unaware of how these and other arguments are being used in the culture wars to link Christians to Hitler and demonize them as a menace to American democracy.

Relying on the bible as the Word of God, Hitler, the Holocaust, and the Bible responds to deceptive attacks on Christianity. The widely misunderstood question of what a Christian is is clarified according to scripture, and hatred and cruelty of any sort are shown to be contrary to the message of Christ. It studies the failure of German Christians — with rare exceptions — to stand for Christ, and shows that blind obedience to Hitler was contrary to biblical Christianity.

Also examined is the secular nature of Hitler’s thought. Hitler’s hostility to Jewish-inspired Christianity is shown, and his philosophical roots in German philosophy, secular racial anti-Semitism, and German interpretations of Darwinism are explored. It was human wisdom, not the Bible, that opened the door to Hitler.

• Title: Hitler, the Holocaust, and the Bible: A Scriptural Analysis of Anti-Semitism, National Socialism, and the Churches in Nazi Germany
• Author: Joe Keysor
  
• Pages: 404
• ISBN: 978-0-9822776-0-7
• Publisher: Athanatos Publishing Group
• Release Date: Hitler’s Birthday, April 20th, 2009.
• Cover Design: Sojourner Design

Author’s Biography:

Joe Keysor currently teaches English at a private school in Oman, where he has been for over five years. He taught English at private schools, a college, and a university in mainland China for eight years. He has a BA in Russian and East European Studies from MacMurray College and a masters degree in adult education from Northern Illinois University.